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Yes you can use the sand with out any problems, i went the expensive way with my 55 gallon reef tank, and 25 gallon f/o tank and went with the expensive live sand. With my 210 gallon though I bought the lowe's sand, and it works fine. The main advantage of aragonite sand is that its calcium based, and buffers with better results. But ive read many statements from other reef owners that use silicone based sands and have had no problems. You just have to keep your calcium level up, and as long as you perform routine tank maintenance (water changes, filter cleaning, etc.) you will be ok. And the fact that live sand will run you $40 dollars for 20 pounds, where you can get silicone based sand for $3 dollars for 50 pounds. I spent $24 dollars on 400 pounds of sand. Versus I would of spent a fortune on so called live sand (aragonite based) and a total of $800 for 400 pounds of this sand. You can have live sand very easy the same way you can buy base dry rock and create live rock. Create you wanted sand bed from silicone based sand, for mine to have a 2" sandbed was 400 pounds. Then I bought 40 pounds of live sand, and added it to the tank. In about six months from now I will have a full live sand bed with all the beneficials batercias and pods needed. The same is done with live rock, you can buy nice rock from hirocks.com (dry based) add it to your tank, and add 3 or 4 nice size pieces of live rock to the tank, and within 6 months all the drybased rocks will be covered in coraline algea, and will actually be official live rock. These are just some helpful tips to save money. I went all out on my first tank and could of saved half that money if I had talked to the right people to begin with. Hope this helps.
